Get Backers Generations
by Bons Baisers
Summary: The Get Backers have faced innumerable trials in their years together, but can they handle fatherhood? Of course! With an almost 100 percent success rate... Pairings so far: Ban X Natsumi, Ginji X Himiko, and Shido X Madoka. Ch 4: Refrigerator Memories
1. The Cat and the Old Man

GetBackers doesn't belong to me. Sad but true.

This story began as a oneshot, but I kinda fell in love with the idea of the Get Backer crew as parents. If you've already read The Cat and the Old Man, head over to chapter two. Although comments are always appreciated, thanks for reading, whether you review or not. I hope you enjoy it.

And just to keep everybody straight: Kaminari belongs to Ginji X Himiko (wierd? I'll explain later); Riye belongs to Ban X Natsumi, Katsu belongs to Shido X Madoka, and Satoshi is Paul's son. I haven't exactly picked out a mom for him... yet...

The Cat and the Old Man

"Riye-chan!" Kaminari flung her arms around the much smaller girl, unknowingly crushing Riye's damaged left shoulder. "You're okay?" She began frantically eyeing Riye for blood, thankfully too excited to notice the careful manner in which Riye held herself.

"Of course I'm okay, idiot," Riye retorted, earning a reproachful pout from the tall, blonde Kaminari. To which she responded with a bold wink. "Don't you know me at all?"

"You had a little help," Katsu Fuyuki reminded her sourly. In her excitement, Kaminari hadn't noticed the dark-haired man leaning against the wall of the Honky Tonk. Seeing him now, she flashed a brilliant smile in his direction.

"Katsu-kun!"

"Can it, monkey-boy," Riye said, throwing a dirty look over her shoulder. She hid a wince as Kaminari grabbed her hand to lead her to the bar. A nasty gash over her left shoulder blade throbbed incessantly and her right ankle had been badly bruised, maybe even sprained, so it was difficult to move without alerting Kaminari to her injuries.

"Not even a thank you. How typical."

Riye jerked free of Kaminari's grasp to wheel on the tall boy behind her. Her body protested; she mentally told it to shut up. "You bastard, you almost got me killed back there."

"You would have been killed if I hadn't shown up, Riye-chan." He raised his eyebrows at her mockingly.

"Nobody told you to stick a chan on my name, Fuyuki," she snarled. "And I was doing perfectly fine on my own."

"You have such an aversion to suffixes, Riye-chan. It's very disrespectful."

"I have an aversion to you, Fuyuki."

"Feeling's mutual." He shoved himself off the wall and sauntered toward the exit. "Take care, Kam-chan," he called over his shoulder from the doorway.

The use of Kaminari's private nickname sent Riye into a rare temper. "Nobody calls her that but me, you filthy animal!"

"Ciao." He left, leaving a fuming Riye behind.

"He doesn't really call me that, Riye-chan. He just does it to upset you. Because you go out of your way to aggravate him." Kaminari sighed theatrically. "You two are always at each other's throats. I really wish you'd try to get along, for my sake, if nothing else."

Riye scowled. "It's his fault. That sorry jerk, he knows just where all my buttons are, doesn't he?"

Kaminari smiled with amusement, and her dark eyes laughed wickedly. "I wonder."

Riye shifted uncomfortably in her seat at the bar, but for once could think of nothing to say.

"Are you two finished scaring away my customers?" The son of the Honky Tonk's owner crossed his arms, his eyes stern.

"Sorry, Sato-kun," Kaminari apologized quickly. Riye raised her hands in surrender, forcing herself to make the gesture look natural despite the pain that raced down her arm from her shoulder.

"Slow night, Satoshi?" The man was several years older than Kaminari and Riye, and a couple of years older than Fuyuki Katsu. Riye smothered a grin. Kaminari had always had a little crush on the redhead behind the counter and got nervous anytime it seemed like he was annoyed with her. Couldn't blame her. Satoshi Wan's strawberry curls and pretty lavender eyes were enough to make most women get a little flustered.

"I think it's the heat," he shrugged. "Or maybe you witch kids just curse us with bad luck."

"Bull. There's never anyone in this dump." Riye snorted. She accidently knocked her foot against the barstool and couldn't hide her wince.

"No one of any significance," he agreed, with a meaningful look at Riye. She would have argued the point – Riye Midou never took an insult lying down – but her phone jangled loudly in her pocket.

"You've reached the great Riye Midou-sama," she answered, with a pointed glare at Satoshi. After listening for a moment, she rolled her eyes and held the phone out to Kaminari. "Your dad. Your phone must be dead again, Kam-chan."

"Daddy!" Kaminari greeted him with her usual high spirits. The voice that straggled out from the phone, mechanized as it was, matched hers for enthusiasm. Riye and Satoshi exchanged amused looks. Kaminari had come by her sweet, exuberant personality honestly. Fortunate girl had also been blessed with good looks and never lacked for friends.

She retreated to a booth and jabbered excitedly on the phone for several minutes, but the throbbing in Riye's shoulder and her ankle had become too intense for Kaminari's best friend to pay much attention.

"Did you hear, Riye-chan?" Kaminari's eyes glowed with anticipation. "Daddy's coming to take me to that new horror flick, the one with the mummy, you know?" As she prattled on, Riye tried to insert the appropriate "hmmms" or "reallys?" or "yeahs" into the conversation, but she was really beginning to feel the effects of the day's fight. Even so, she couldn't help smiling at her friend's excitement. Girl got as worked up over a night out with her old man as she did for dates with the school heartthrobs.

Her old man, on the other hand…

Well, they were close; there was no doubt about that. Probably nobody understood them as well as they understood each other, except Kaminari and Ginji. But just as Kaminari had inherited her loveable character from her father, so had Riye inherited her own father's argumentative belligerence. It was inevitable that they would butt heads.

"Ah! He's here! Gotta go, Riye-chan – and you're sure you okay?" Kaminari raced toward the door, sparing a second for her friend.

"I'm fine, don't worry. Have a good time, Kam-chan."

Kaminari's father waved at her through the window, she used her right hand to wave back.

"So. How bad is it?" Satoshi had somehow snuck up to sit beside her at the bar.

"Eh?"

"You're bleeding, kiddo." She turned an angry glare on the blood that was beginning to seep through her shirt.

"Dammit. If that stupid monkey-trainer didn't know how to properly tie a bandage, he should have let me do it for myself," she muttered. She looked up frankly at the redhead.

"Don't tell my old man, Sato-kun." Unfortunately, Satoshi's eyes weren't on her.

"Don't tell your old man what, Riye?" The cool voice from the doorway was calm. It would have been better if he'd yelled; Midou Ban, like his daughter, was naturally a loud, antagonistic kind of person. This controlled seriousness was bad. He was furious.

Riye turned slowly to watch his approach. If his demeanor was cold, his eyes certainly were not. A blue storm raged behind his sunglasses.

"That I put tonight's dinner on your tab?" Damn. It wasn't supposed to be a question.

"Is that right." That was supposed to be a question. It wasn't. He stood at her left, staring coldly at her.

"It's not that…" She yelped as her father's grip descended on her bloody shoulder. He wasn't exerting even a fraction of his true strength, but the pressure put her off the bar stool and on her knees.

"Sato-kun, I'll be borrowing the men's room for a bit. Sorry." He hauled her to her feet and shoved a hand in the small of her back, forcing her to walk toward the back of the restaurant.

He locked the bathroom door behind them. Paul Wan kept a first aid kit in the cabinet under the sink; her father pulled it out and set it on the countertop. After carefully pulling her hair aside, he ripped apart the back of her shirt to reveal the blood-soaked bandage beneath. She held the remains of her blouse to her chest as he stood behind her, peeling away the dressing.

"What," he asked slowly, "what _exactly_ were you thinking?"

"They had something that belonged to me. I wanted it back," she answered, opting for honesty.

Evidently that wasn't the correct response.

"I could have gotten the damned cat back for you, Riye!" The loud words grated like sandpaper on flesh, and Riye shuddered. The loss of control the outburst signified stunned her, even frightened her.

She looked at the floor, suddenly ashamed.

He doused the ragged wound on her shoulder with alcohol. It stung madly, but she refused to flinch.

"It's mom's precious cat. I was ashamed that someone had been able to take it from me." The admission came reluctantly to Riye; her voice caught in her throat and she had to struggle not to allow her voice to crack.

His hands gripped her upper arms tightly, but not painfully. Bending over her, he rested his forehead against the back of her head. His breath ruffled her hair, and she relaxed a little.

"Your mother would rather lose the cat than you, brat." She breathed a little easier hearing the frustration in his voice. Anything was better than that raw fury before.

"I had to get it back." Abruptly she began to explain, because now that he had calmed down a little, she knew he would understand. She turned to look up at him; he dwarfed her by a good nine inches. He raised his brows, but didn't interrupt. "It was my mistake and I had to fix it – not you, and not Ginji. Me."

His long-fingered hands were suddenly around her waist, and before she knew it, he'd deposited her on the countertop beside the first-aid kit, and had turned her around to face the mirror. She drew her knees up to her chest as he began to bandage her wound.

"Hold your damned hair out of the way, won't you?" he groused, and she wrapped her hands around the dark locks he'd tossed over her right shoulder. He began to lay big squares of sterile cloth over the gash.

"After all that, you did get it back, didn't you?" The quiet question surprised her, and she dipped her fingers into the cargo pocket of her pants, reaching for the old cat charm to show the spoils of her fight. Withdrawing it caused the pant leg to slide up a little, revealing the ugly bruise on her ankle in the mirror.

She could see her father's reflected scowl and smiled contritely. "Oh, yeah…" Riye cradled the charm in her fingers, holding up the ruins of her shirt at the same time.

He finished up with her shoulder, neatly taping the white bandages into place. Spinning her around on the countertop, he crouched to examine her ankle. It had swollen considerably since monkey-boy had first knocked her over on his way into the fight. Of course, if he hadn't, the knife wound on her shoulder would have landed across her throat.

Her dad sighed, and for a moment looked a lot older than his forty-one years. "I can't tell if it's sprained or fractured," he confessed. "So I guess our next stop is the emergency room."

Riye suppressed a groan; he wouldn't have any patience with her complaints tonight. Even if he hated hospitals as much as she did. But her distaste must have shown anyway, because he smiled wryly up at her, and the too-old… something… that had settled on him vanished. "That's what you get, brat."

She tried to step down from the countertop, but he was too fast for her. The same way Katsu Fuyuki had carried her back from the Yakuza warehouse, her old man picked her up now. "Until we know what's wrong with your ankle, you'd probably better not walk on it."

"Dad." She shook her head. He'd gone into his cocky, irritating do-as-I-say-or-you'll-regret-it mode. At least he wasn't really mad anymore.

She unlocked the door for him, and he carried her out of the bathroom, much to the titillation of the crowd that had gathered in the Honky Tonk. Good-looking guy, close to middle-aged, carrying a teenager with a scrap of cloth over her bra…

"Maybe we really are a curse on this place," Riye muttered under her breath.

"Two to go, Satoshi," her dad called. Either he hadn't noticed the funny looks they were getting, or he just didn't care. Satoshi saw, but he kept his mouth shut as he poured them each a styrofoam cup full of black coffee. He gave them to Riye, who held them as her father carried her to the car.

"You must have been right on Ginji's tail," Riye noted, watching the Honky Tonk fade into the background.

Her dad nodded. They rode in silence for several minutes.

"Riye." There was a seriousness in his tone now – not the cold, implacable severity of earlier, but a warning to pay attention.

She turned to look at him, but he kept his eyes on the road. "I'm listening."

"Why didn't you take Kaminari with you?" Strange question. 'What were you thinking' had sounded a lot more like the Midou Ban Riye had grown up with.

She considered it. "Because I didn't want her to get hurt."

"She's a tough kid."

"She's too sweet."

"So's Ginji, but I'd have taken him with me." Riye turned that over in her head for a minute, but couldn't reason her way through it.

She poked him in the side. "I don't follow. Make your point, old man."

He inhaled deeply, and Riye knew instictively that he wanted a cigarette, although he'd "quit" almost four years ago. "You don't trust her?"

"It's not that," she answered immediately. "Not at all. It's just…" She turned to watch the road too. "It's just that this was something I could handle on my own. She'd have come if I'd asked her to. When I called her, after the monkey-boy showed up and we scattered the rest of the Yakuza, she was angry that I hadn't told her. But you know Kaminari – she never stays mad long. She was just happy I was okay by the time we got to the Honky Tonk."

"So you didn't tell her because…" He waited.

"Because it seemed like a lot to ask for, when it was something I could do by myself."

He pulled over into a little gas station, went in, and came back with a pack of Marlboros. "Don't tell your mother."

Riye grinned. "I won't tell if you won't."

"Deal." He lit up and took a long drag. "Riye." There was that serious note again.

"Yeah?"

"You should have taken her with you." Riye waited for an explanation.

Her dad took another drag and blew smoke out the window. "Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me – "

"And be my friend," she finished. "Camus."

"Being friends means not having to go it alone, Riye, even when you're able to. It also means not letting your friends do stupid shit without you – Kaminari was right to be angry."

Well, if he was in the mood for quotes: "A friend is someone who will bail you out of jail; a best friend is the person sitting next to you saying 'Damn, that was fun?'" Riye quipped. Her dad had closed his eyes and leaned back on the headrest. A faint smile touched his mouth, showing a flash of the white teeth that gripped his cigarette.

"Something like that."

"So the next time I take on the Yakuza," she said dryly, "I should be sure to drag Kaminari into it with me?"

"I'm hoping she'll have sense enough to prevent a next time. You're supposed to be the smart one, kid, so it worries me that I have to rely on her to keep you out of trouble." The smile remained on his lips, robbing his words of any sting they might have carried. They sat quietly for a minute or two.

"So you seriously would have asked Ginji for help doing something stupid like this, old man?"

"Not if pigs flew over a western sunrise on a cold day in hell." She stared at him, confused. His smile widened, though he kept his eyes closed.

"But then, he knows me well enough that I'd never have to ask."

"Oh." She turned away, suddenly dispirited, though she wasn't quite sure why. She hadn't wanted Kaminari's help, after all. But it would have been nice if she'd guessed…

Her dad clonked the back of her head with a loose fist. She winced and turned around. "Did you know she was already at the Honky Tonk when you called her, genius? Who do you think called Fuyuki and sent him after you? She was on her way, calling everyone she could think of, and he happened to be a lot closer than she was. He sent her back to the Honky Tonk to wait for you. And when you got there, she tried her best not to let you see how worried she was – because she didn't want to start a fight that might hurt you even more."

Taken aback, Riye could do nothing but stare at the amused smirk on her dad's face for several minutes. He finally crushed his cigarette and pulled back onto the highway, headed toward the hospital.

"I am such an idiot," Riye groaned finally, face in her hands.

A long-fingered hand gently ruffled her hair. "Yeah. But you come by it honest."


	2. One of THOSE Days

The Get Backers and their world don't belong to me.

Ever had one of those days? So do Riye Midou and Kaminari Amano. Of course, we don't have the invincible Get Backers to make it better. Enjoy!

One of THOSE Days

"Riye." Ban Midou stood in the doorway of his daughter's room, frowning. He had called her several times – she was already ten minutes late – but the warning he'd prepared died on his lips. "Something wrong, kid?"

Riye Midou sat on her bed with her legs dangling off the edge and her head dropped limberly to her knees. "Nothing you could fix." She sluggishly got to her feet, sighing.

"Trust me," he invited. He cocked a brow at her, grinning roguishly.

His self-assurance was baldly disregarded.

"Trust _me_." She grunted as she heaved a massive backpack to her slender shoulders. "If you could fix what's wrong with me, something like… is it sixty percent? Close enough. Sixty percent of the world's population would hail you as a god and worship your image for the rest of eternity."

"Ah."

She sighed again. "At least it's always just as awful for Kam-chan," she groused.

"Misery loves company."

"Yes." She met him at the doorway, wincing as she walked.

"That bad, huh?" For once, his characteristic sarcasm had been dropped.

"Yes."

He cupped a hand around the back of her head and pressed her forehead firmly to his lips. "You taken anything for it yet?"

Shaking her head wearily, she pushed her way past him. "All out of Midol. Kam-chan wiped me out last month."

"There's Tylenol in the kitchen."

"Not the same."

Ban opened his mouth to argue the point, but Riye cut him off. "I know it's basically the same drugs, Dad. It's still not the same." She smiled ruefully. "It's stupid. I probably just bought into the advertising scam."

Ban walked her to the door and watched as she carefully picked her way toward Kaminari Amano, who looked every bit as wretched as Riye did. He hid a smile, so as not to be thought unsympathetic. This was a torment he and Ginji had never had to face, but it wasn't exactly as if they hadn't had their share of misfortunes. Great friends suffer alongside you. Unless, of course, they are the cause of your suffering. And that had happened a time or two as well.

His cell rang; he looked for the caller. Ginji, surprise, surprise. He could have walked across the street, numbskull.

But Ban's amusement quickly faded, replaced by interest as Ginji spoke. Ban was usually the brains of their partnership, so it surprised him a little when Ginji had a decent idea. He liked this one.

Hanging up with Ginji, he pressed and held the #2 key on his cell. Natsumi was still at work, where she'd been all night. She'd been on-call in the ER when a train wreck sent several dozen people swarming into the nearest hospitals, and she hadn't been home in almost thirty-six hours. He usually wouldn't have bothered her, but she'd called an hour ago to say she'd be on her way home soon.

"Natsumi? Got a question for you."

When he'd finished with his wife, he called Rena and asked her the same question.

He picked up Ginji fifteen minutes later, and the invincible duo plunged forward with their plan.

When their daughters got home from school, there was a note on Kaminari's door informing them that their fathers were out on a case, that Himiko was off transporting something or other, and that Kaminari should be prepared to stay the night at the Midou's with Riye and Natsumi. It wasn't unusual; in fact, both girls kept a drawer full of their clothes and duplicate hygienic products at the other's house. Evidently nobody trusted the sixteen-year-olds to take care of themselves.

Frustrating, certainly, but when one's parents can generate electricity, manipulate poison, or crush steel in their bare hands, arguing would be a bad idea. Besides, it wasn't as if the girls really minded sleeping over all the time. The only dark spot appeared when all four parents were out, and they wound up stuck with the Fuyukis. Shido-san and Madoka-san were all right, but Riye had a peculiar aversion to their eldest son, Katsu. They never managed to get along more than a few minutes before somebody said something smart and started a fight.

Fortunately, Riye wouldn't have to deal with him today; Kaminari's mom had managed to get home from the ER and its train wreck victims. So Kaminari went inside her house only briefly to pick up a book she'd left behind and met an impatient, unhappy Riye at the gate.

"Screw homework. I'm curling up in bed, and I'm not moving for the next two days." Riye crossed her arms tightly over her stomach. Kaminari nodded in silent agreement.

Their moods brightened considerably when they got to Riye's door.

"What's this?" Kaminari knelt beside the big cardboard box. Ginji's scrawl had marked the box 'To Riye and Kaminari' and a folded sheet of notebook paper had been taped to the top of it.

Riye pried this off and read it aloud as Kaminari tore into the package.

"Well, I'm no god, but I hope this helps – "

"Riye-chan!" Kaminari squealed. "Look!"

Riye folded the note again and knelt beside her friend. The box contained a giant bottle of Midol, two heating pads, a couple of sappy chick flicks, and an 'out sick' note with the next day's date scribbled across the top.

Kaminari twisted the cap off the medicine and popped a couple of pills dry before handing the bottle to Riye, who eagerly followed her example. Kaminari took the note from Riye and finished reading it.

"There was only one pint of Rocky Road left, so you're going to have to share." They didn't get past 'Rocky Road.' Though Riye had the foresight to snatch up the box, both girls were scrambling for the kitchen, and left the note fluttering in the spring breeze.

'Feel better soon. Love you.' It was signed, 'The Invincible Get Backers.'


	3. Himiko Hearts Ginji

Nope, these guys still aren't mine.

I always liked the idea of Ginji and Himiko... she seemed like she needed a little innocence in her life. So... here's my rationalization for a kinda off-the-wall pairing.

Himiko Hearts Ginji

"Damn." An incessantly beeping cell phone, deliberately set to begin beeping at seven thirty, and therefore innocent of any real offense, hurtled over a blue and green bedspread and into the bedroom wall. The electricity had gone off again – not an uncommon occurrence in the Amano household, what with the pair of electricity-generating freaks who inhabited it. But it always reset the clocks, and the cell alarm was the standard back-up. Unfortunately, it was Monday morning, and no one had remembered to change the time after the weekend. The bedroom alarm clock was usually set to 6:00. It seemed that the Amanos were going to be late getting around this morning.

It wasn't terrible –Kaminari had to be at school by eight thirty, but she never took long to get ready. Her hair, like her father's, always did exactly as she wanted it to, without recourse to gels, sprays, or heat. She rarely chose to wear make-up, and barring any lost shoes or homework (she wasn't especially organized), she shouldn't have any trouble making to school on time.

But her mother always, always got up to make her breakfast and check her backpack, to remind her that she had soccer practice or that Katsu Fuyuki and Riye Midou had a recital that evening and not to make plans, and to generally make sure she had her stuff together. And her father always, always walked just out of sight behind her, all the way to school, to make sure she got there okay. And that was great; they were good parents and proud of it, and, given their nonexistent childhoods, enjoyed babying their precious little girl. Except when they woke up too late to enjoy each other first.

He didn't mind so much. He was willing any time, any place, anywhere, but as flattering as that was, Himiko was definitely a morning-sex person. And watching the gray morning light slide over her husband's finely chiseled physique as he breathed – still asleep despite the cell, damn him – made her suddenly resent parenthood.

"Ginji." She nudged him, but he didn't respond.

"Ginji." Himiko frowned. Jerk.

She pulled the sheets a little further down, revealing a pair of black-and-red boxers. He'd actually been a briefs guy, much to Himiko's surprise, but as a concession to her early morning cravings had switched to something easier to strip out of while still half-asleep. Time to pull out the big guns.

Himiki straddled his thighs and slipped her hands onto his abdomen, just under the waistband of his boxers. Frowning with concentration, she felt carefully for her target. This was easy to mess up, and if she didn't get it just right, he would retaliate. He had to be incapacitated the moment he woke up.

There.

Holding his hips between her thumbs and index fingers, she positioned her thumbs on the soft tissue that lay just beside the really pointy part of his pelvic bone.

And _squeezed_.

Ginji's frantic, hysterical laughter woke Mina (Kaminari's nickname), which was more or less what Himiko had intended. She did not, however, expect her daughter to rush into their bedroom or to take her father's side in the ensuing battle, and certainly didn't expect to be cruelly restrained by her husband and mercilessly tickled by her sixteen-year-old.

Flailing and screaming and probably terrifying the old couple next door, she reminded herself to incinerate Ban with Flame Poison the next time she saw him. The bastard had told Ginji all of her ticklish spots years ago.

Well, mostly all. Over the years, Ginji had found a few Ban hadn't known about. One even she herself hadn't known about. But he'd wait until Mina was safely at school to exact full retribution for his rude awakening.

After a truce had been called – by Mina, who had turned coat and teamed with her mother – Himiko got breakfast ready. It was huge, as always. Maybe it had something to do with their electrical powers, but Ginji and Mina both had fantastic appetites and, gallingly, the incredible metabolisms to match.

Ginji cleared the dishes away, and he would wash them too, when he returned from Mina's school. Well. After he'd punished her for tickling him, he would take care of the dishes. It was one of the many things that made their relationship work: Himiko just didn't _do_ housework. She cooked, mostly because she didn't trust Ginji not to forget that the stove was on, and she picked up after herself, but the majority of the real cleaning fell to Ginji. And though no one likes chores, he cleaned house the same way he did everything else – with a smile.

Ban teased her frequently about her housewife. Other, less understanding individuals teased her about her 'other child.'

Maybe there was an element of legitimacy to the implied role-reversal. Himiko considered herself the dominant personality in their marriage, at least, most of the time; she was certainly the responsible one. But, then, she _liked_ it that way. Ginji liked it that way. He'd had his fill of responsibility in his youth and didn't resent her decisiveness at all. She'd raised herself to be an independent woman; for a long time, she hadn't believed she would ever marry. She dealt with their finances, she usually wound up being the one to discipline Mina, and when they disagreed, he usually capitulated before she did.

But then, there were those other times. Ginji didn't vie with her for control very often. He picked his battles, and they were few and far between. But when he chose to oppose her, he almost always won.

Those times when he told her to run, and she obeyed without questioning. Those times he held his ground over a foolish, if goodhearted decision, because he thought it was the right thing to do, and be damned to her pragmatism. Those times she woke in the night, face wet with tears, haunted by half-remembered dreams and half-dreamt memories, and he pulled her into his arms and locked her into place against him, when she would have run away to be alone with her demons.

It was easy to dismiss Ginji as simple, or childlike. But having experienced as many of 'those times' as Himiko had, she knew better. The simple way he split up good and evil, the childlike wonder he regarded the silliest things with, they were endearing, but to someone as jaded as she was, there was more to it than that.

Ban's little girl, Riye, had said it best. The Get Backers had been off on some wild adventure or other, and Natsumi and Himiko had decided to take their six-year-old daughters to the zoo. Natsumi had left for a moment to visit the ladies room, and Himiko was watching the girls. Smiling at Mina's fascination with the electric eels in the aquarium, she'd been suddenly distracted by a very serious Riye at her side.

"Himiko-san? You and Ginji-san won't ever move away, will you?" The girls' friend Chiyoe had moved to Okinawa a week before, so the question wasn't entirely unexpected.

"I really doubt it, Riye-chan. Your dad and Ginji are pretty stuck together, you know."

"Good. I don't want Kam-chan to go away." A little hand had reached for hers at that point; Himiko'd taken it, careful to keep her own daughter in sight.

"Is that so?" Himiko had smiled.

"Daddy says we're cursed." Himiko remembered freezing in place, wondering why on earth Ban couldn't have waited until Riye were a little older to tell her such things. "I know he wouldn't lie to me, but…" Her little face had screwed up in concentration. Himiko had dropped to her knees, and though one eye remained on Mina, most of her attention had been drawn to Riye.

"But?"

"But when Kam-chan is around, I just can't believe him," she'd answered finally. "I don't think that anyone who knows Kam-chan can be cursed. Maybe she just makes you forget about it. I think it's more than that, though."

And just like that, Himiko had finally understood Ban's attachment to Ginji, understood her own strange attraction to her husband, understood why people as powerful as the former gods of Infinite Castle had followed him.

Curses didn't matter to Ginji. Past sins and crimes didn't faze him. You could put up all the barriers you liked; he breezed through them like wind though a chain link fence. No matter what weighed you down, a curse, a violent past, unforgivable crimes, terrible memories, your own defense mechanisms – Ginji disregarded them all, and made you feel as though you could disregard them as well. From the moment he met someone, he treated them as the person they could have been, if only they didn't carry the burdens of their past… and made them want to strive to be the person he believed in.

To hell with Raitei; Ginji Amano was godlike in himself, to inspire people to such heights.

Even if she couldn't have explained it before Riye's insightful little comments about Mina, Himiko had intuitively known herself to be a better person when she was with Ginji. And maybe that was part of what she'd fallen in love with.

It didn't hurt that he had the body of a god, either.

Himiko smiled to herself, watching through the window as Ginji approached their door. Had she been lost in reverie for such a long time?

She watched the sun glint off his hair, watched the big hand that turned the key in the lock, watched the ripple in his biceps when he pushed the door open.

The dishes were going to have to wait.


	4. Refrigerator Memories

I can happily claim Riye and Mina -- or Kam-chan, if you like Riye's nickname for her buddy better -- but everyone else in here belongs to Rando Ayamine. The cartoon series Transformers -- soon to be a big movie, yay! -- doesn't belong to me either.

I had fun with this one, so I hope you like it. I decided to try my hand at little kids this time around. As always, review if you want to, but even if you don't, good luck with your own fics, and I hope you enjoy my random drabbles.

Refrigerator Memories

A sudden blast of music woke Ban from his comfortable doze. The theme to some cartoon about giant transforming robots proudly pronounced said robots' intent to save the world from other giant transforming robots.

Riye's slight weight shifted against him as he stretched, and she burrowed down into his side.

"I'm cold, Daddy." Her voice was thick with exhaustion, and hours of hacking coughs had rendered her sweet, piping tones almost unrecognizable, as they were now raspy and harsh. She sounded even worse than she had that afternoon. He pulled her shivering little frame close as he reached for the blue afghan on his left. Riye coughed wetly into her small, long-fingered hands.

"Still not feeling good, huh, baby?" She shook her head and coughed again. Through the thin cotton of his tank, her body felt impossibly warm, and he could feel every racking cough reverberate through his own flesh. He lifted her a little in an attempt to reach her back without making it difficult for her to see the television and fought back a lump in his throat as his usually-energetic little girl hung limply in his arms.

Ban Midou had seen far more than his share of sickness, poverty, death, greed, and injustice. No one had warned him that parenthood could be even more heart-wrenching. It was only the flu, yet it seemed as though no horror he'd witnessed had twisted his soul as painfully. As she tried to focus on the robots and their intergalactic conflict, he rubbed big circles on her shoulders and worried over every ragged breath he felt being drawn and expelled beneath his fingertips, winced at every vicious cough.

"So what're we watching?" He continued to rub her back through the fuzzy, faded afghan.

"Transformers." She stretched tiredly, and attempted a yawn. It was cut off by a series of coughs that left her doubled up over the arm of the chair. Ban dropped an arm around her shoulders to prevent her from plummeting to the floor. Early morning cartoons, dammit. How long had he been asleep? He'd told her he'd sit up with her.

"What time is it, Riye?"

She shrugged, a slow, slight movement that bespoke her exhaustion. "Four thirty or five."

"Did you sleep at all?"

Her black little head turned sideways against his chest. No.

He slipped a hand to her forehead. Still burning up.

"Ready for some more medicine?" She shook her head again, a little more vigorously. No, definitely not.

"Sorry. Doctor's orders, kiddo." A little noise that might have been a groan, a whimper, or an acknowledgment sounded in her throat. He tucked the blanket around her and stood, right arm braced beneath her bottom, left hand still stroking her back.

Walking into the dark kitchen, he found the bar and the medicine he'd left out on it. Dropping Riye into a chair, afghan still wrapped around her, he found his way to the sink and fumbled with the faucet, trying to rinse out the medicine cup he'd used sometime around midnight. A sticky-sweet orange goo stuck to his finger; he sucked it off and turned the heat of the water up to melt the resistant gunk. When it had been satisfactorily melted, he filled it to the second line with the liquid that was the originator of the orange goo, as per his wife's instructions.

Riye looked up with a sad appeal in her eyes when he handed her the cup, but for once, obeyed without complaining. Wrinkling her nose with distaste, she gave it back to him. He took it and put it back on the counter. If he were as fastidious as Natsumi, he'd wash it out immediately. But he wasn't, so the cup was going to stay right there on the bar until he needed it again.

The doorbell rang.

Ban rolled his eyes. At four fifty two, only one person would have the audacity to invade the Midou residence.

Of course, Ginji and his family happened to be the only people who were welcome there any time of the day.

"I forgot that Mina-chan was sick too." Ban smiled lopsidedly at his little girl, who was shivering beneath her blanket. He picked her up and strode to the door.

Sure enough, Ginji stood just outside in the still-dark morning, holding his own little four-year-old, Kaminari, and looking as exhausted as Ban felt.

"Hi, Kam-chan. We're watching Transformers," Riye told her friend.

"So wuh we. I think they'eh in twouble, cuz Optimus isn't theyeh." She was so serious, they might have been discussing the potential pitfalls of the new government firearm policy. Ban hid a smile, charmed by Kaminari's adorably mispronounced words, and let his old friend in.

"You not feeling good either, Mina-chan?" Ban asked, ruffling Kaminari's soft blonde spikes.

"I feeuh ucky, unca Ban." Ginji tightened his grip on her. The old partners shared a look. It seemed they were to share misfortunes in fatherhood just as they were everything else. Ban shook his head with a smile.

"Want some juice?" He looked expectantly between the two girls. Riye nodded immediately; he'd known she would. She wanted the taste of the orange kiddy-medicine out of her mouth.

"What kind?" Kaminari wanted to know.

"Grape."

She narrowed her dark blue eyes thoughtfully. "Cweeah ohw pupple?

He considered a moment. "White grape. Clear."

Smiling her father's trademark thousand watt smile, she nodded once in affirmation.

The Get Backers bundled their sick kids up together on the sofa in front of the TV and retreated to the kitchen.

"Sorry, Ban-chan. Himiko's been out all night, and when we saw the TV flashing, we thought you might not mind the company." A sheepish grin crossed Ginji's face as he pulled two sippy cups from the cabinet left of the stove.

Ban chuckled. "I don't mind. I can only take those damn cartoons so long before I need some adult conversation."

Ginji stared at him. "You don't like Transformers? Mina and I wake up early every Saturday to watch them!" He narrowly avoided the spatula Ban threw at him. "I'm kidding, Ban-chan. Although it's a lot better than those puppet things Mina likes."

His face fell. "I don't think Mina slept at all. I know I didn't."

"I drowsed off around three, but Riye's been awake all night. Every time she'd lie down, the coughing got worse."

Ginji nodded miserably. "I hate seeing her feeling so bad."

"You can tell she feels rotten, she hasn't mispronounced her words that badly in a long time."

Ginji laughed suddenly. "She doesn't mispronounce them, Ban-chan. Except for you."

"For me?"

"Yeah. I asked her about it when I first noticed it. She told me that you don't smile enough, but that you always smiled when she talked 'baby-talk,' and she'd keep doing it as long as it made you smile." He smiled guiltily. "She asked me not to tell you, so don't let on that you know, okay?"

Touched, Ban poured the juice. As he watched his right hand, it suddenly occurred to him that he'd probably thrown more punches with that hand in his life than he'd poured cups of juice. Probably killed more people than he'd changed diapers. A strange surrealism descended on him.

"Ginji."

His blonde partner screwed the brightly colored lids onto their respective cups. "Hmm?"

"Did you ever think it would be like this?" Ban picked up Riye's cup – always the blue one; Mina's was green. He didn't usually wax reflective like this, but, sleep-deprived and worried, he felt his sudden, queer frame of mind justified.

Fortunately he didn't have to explain himself; as always, Ginji read him like an open book.

"Back then?"

Ban nodded.

"Back then, I didn't think 'back then' would ever end." Ginji leaned over the bar, serious for once. "And if you'd told me it would, I would have been either really sad, or I wouldn't have believed you. But even though those were some of the best times of my life, I wouldn't trade one memory of Mina to have them again, Ban-chan."

He turned away from his partner, and looked instead at the many, many photographs Ban had posted all over the refrigerator door. Natsumi usually took the credit for it, of course; it just didn't do for someone like Ban to have a soft spot for photographs. But anyone who knew Natsumi's meticulous housekeeping would have to suspect that she wouldn't display her photos so haphazardly.

But there were Mina and Riye at Riye's third birthday, seven weeks after Mina's, squabbling over the piece of cake with the most frosting. They'd both had short, adorably spiked hair at the time, and, as both happened to have their father's hair color, they looked like chibi forms of Ban and Ginji. Particularly since Riye was standing on Mina's head.

And there was Natsumi, glowing like a spring dawn, that day at the beach. Her pretty cheeks were flushed, but it wasn't from the heat or the sun. No, she'd felt self-conscious all day next to the big-breasted, empty-headed twits that stalked the water's edge – until Ban snuck into the women's shower to spy on his wife, carefully oblivious to the other beauties around her. Ban got thrown off the beach that day. But he was amply rewarded for his pains when Natsumi got home. Himiko had knowingly offered to babysit.

And his favorite picture, one of all of them together, held a prominent place not only on the refrigerator, but also in his wallet. The two Get Backers stood side-by-side, holding their new-born daughters, their wives on either side, arms wrapped around their husbands. Ginji'd said once that every single person in that picture was happy, even Ban, and Ban couldn't help but agree. His beautiful Natsumi smiled big and sweet at the camera, loving the attention, loving Ban for giving it to her, loving the little girl he held in his arms. Himiko and Ban shared the same crooked grin, one they'd both picked up from Yamato, one streetwise and just a little cynical, but happy nonetheless. And, of course, Ginji, whose smile could light up a whole football stadium. The girls were too young to be smiling yet, but at that point in their lives, consciousness sans crying signified contentment at the very least.

"Me neither." Ban flashed that crooked grin at his partner, who grinned back. Carefully juggling the two sippy cups, Ban ruffled Ginji's hair for old times sake, then gestured to the living room.

They'd made it half-way there when the phone rang. Ginji put it on speaker phone after Ban nearly lost his hold on the cups trying to answer it.

"Ban? You there?"

"Yeah, what d'ya want?"

"How's my little god-daughter? Natsumi stopped in and said she and Mina-chan were sick – is she alright?" Paul Wan sounded a little worried.

"She's fine, old man; if she weren't, Natsumi wouldn't have left her with me," Ban pointed out wryly. "Mina's here, too, actually."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Hi, Paul," Ginji called from across the room. In the half-minute since the phone's ringing, he'd managed to wander back to the refrigerator and was currently digging through it in search of breakfast.

"You two take care of them – or Fuyuki and I'll be on your asses." Ban shook a fist, grinding his teeth. He was good father; he definitely did not need the monkey-man's criticisms.

"Don't worry about it, Paul," Ginji said cheerfully. "They'll be okay. Everyone knew as soon as Riye got sick, Mina would too. That's just the way they are."

"Let me know if I can do anything."

"We will, old man," Ban answered, unclenching his fist.

"That's enough of that 'old man' business, you ingrate. Tell the girls we hope they feel better. And that there's a fudge brownie waiting with ice cream when they do."

Ginji laughed, and even Ban couldn't help smiling a little. They said their good-byes, and Ginji spun a plate with formerly frozen, now toasted waffles on it across the counter toward Ban.

"Paul was a good choice for Riye's godfather," he noted, munching into waffles of his own. "Even though he's older than we are.

"Yeah. But I still can't believe you picked that monkey trainer to take care of Mina. What were you thinking?" He hesitated for a moment before deciding he really was hungry, and set the juices down on the table to wolf down the waffles.

"Mina gets along with Katsu really well," Ginji defended himself. "Himiko likes Shido, and Madoka's crazy about Mina. It works out for the best."

"Bah."

It had taken months for the subject of godparents to be comfortable between the Get Backers. Ginji had asked Shido to be Mina's godfather without even telling Ban, who'd naturally assumed he would have that honor. When he finally allowed Ginji to explain himself, he'd seen that for once, Ginji's decision had been rather wiser than his own. Because, as Ginji had already realized, if something were to happen to one Get Backer, it was likely to happen to the other as well. So making each other the guardians of their children would have been foolish.

Of course, there was still Natsumi and Himiko, and hopefully those honorary titles bestowed upon Paul and Shido would remain formalities. Well, formalities with picture privileges. There were a number of photos on Ban's refrigerator of the godparents and their families.

Ban polished of his waffles in short order and hooked his fingers through the handles of the girls' cups. The imagined sounds of lasers and crashing car-robots filtered through the shuttered doors that divided the kitchen and dining room from the den, and Ban followed them toward the television, toward the couch.

"Oh," Ginji said softly when they reached the girls.

The pair were snuggled close together under their blanket. Riye's small black head drooped onto Mina's shoulder, while Mina's blonde spikes rested on her friend's. Ban and Ginji had taken too long; the girls had fallen asleep. Ban set the juice on the coffee table and slipped into his bedroom, where the camera sat on its pedestal next to the computer. He snapped several shots of the girls before dropping wearily to the couch beside Riye. Ginji joined him, and within minutes, fathers and daughters were snoozing quietly together.

When Himiko got home that morning, she found a note telling her that Ginji and Mina were at the Midous. So she let herself in, and, after a muffled snicker, sat down with the others on the sofa. She'd been running since midnight the night before, when Mina had started running a fever, and it wasn't long before she fell asleep as well.

Natsumi arrived at about nine o'clock. She found Himiko asleep on the sofa, lying with her feet thrown over the arm and her head in Ginji's lap. Ginji's legs were stretched out onto the coffee table and crossed at the ankles, and his head rested precariously on the back of the sofa, baring his throat. One arm encircled the little girls at his side, who sat innocently wound up in each other's arms. Ban's legs were splayed wide, as were his arms, which were draped over the back of the sofa. His head drooped so that his chin rested on his chest.

Natsumi had been in the ER since six o'clock the evening before, and she was exhausted. Even so, she fiddled with Ban's camera, which sat on the coffee table, long enough to find a good angle, then set the timer, and joined her family on the couch. She snuggled into her husband's broad shoulder, reaching across to grasp her little girl's arm.

The next morning, a new photograph joined the many memories on Ban's refrigerator.


End file.
